TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - An epidemiologist from Australia’s Griffith University Dicky Budiman outlined the reasons behind the surge in COVID-19 cases, especially in Jakarta. The first is the public immunity which could be seen from the vaccination coverage.

“In this case, we must refer to [the coverage of] the third-dose vaccination, especially when talking about the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5,” said Dicky via voice message to Tempo on Wednesday night, June 15, 2022.

Secondly, the public health intervention, such as the use of masks and strict policies, added Dicky who is also a global health security researcher. This means, that strong and weak interventions would affect the trend of the disease, including efforts to detect infections to prevent transmission risk.

Thirdly, the changes in virus character. Dicky said the new Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 have been categorized as variants of concern.

However, when talking about which dominant cause is, Dicky underlined that surveillance data is needed, arguing that this spike in cases has become something predictable, let alone the two latest subvariants are more infectious than the previous one.

Dicky further suggested that what needs to be concerned is its severity level and the mortality rate. If the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 are more lethal than the previous subvariants, the third-dose COVID-19 vaccination could be accelerated or even the fourth dose if necessary.

MOH. KHORY ALFARIZI

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